Making Room for Joy

A Sandbox Becomes a Bubbler

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To be honest, I wasn’t sure what this week’s pocket was going to look like, as I have spent most of my free time this past week doing some much-needed Spring cleaning. I recognize that it is not Spring. That should give you an idea of how much-needed the cleaning was. Because I’m such a cool cat, I chose the hottest week we’ve had so far to do this work. Thankfully, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where we are gifted with cool, dry mornings, and you can accomplish a lot before it’s time to take a nap. Still, I worked up a sweat sorting through our things, recognizing winter jackets from several years ago could probably find a better home and that some things we once relied on, no longer served a purpose.  As I did so, I made room for some new joys in our space, a soft red velvet pillow, a bright tablecloth for our outdoor table, a lawn badminton set because you never know when you might need that. Marie Kondo would be proud. I promise just thinking of that badminton set sparks joy.

One of the things we said goodbye to this week was our garden sandbox. I built this sandbox with Mateo when he came to live with us, and since fall, it has sat dormant, well, not exactly dormant. At some point, the neighborhood cats decided that it was pretty cool of me to build them such a fancy washroom. I knew when Mateo and I built the sandbox that it was a temporary structure. I didn’t know if Mateo would be with us forever, but even if he was, kids don’t play in sandboxes forever. At the time, I thought it would be cool to turn the space into a water feature down the road. One of my favorite neighborhood garden stores has a small water feature with water plants and a bubbler, and I find the sounds so soothing.

Photo by Geraldine Dukes on Unsplash

I gave up the idea of transforming my sandbox into a bubbler until I read Douglas Tallamay’s book Nature’s Best Hope, and I learned that bubblers are for the birds, literally. As you may already know, because I talk about it all the time, building a backyard habitat is my summer passion project. Once I learned this, I knew I would have to build the bubbler. It was my heart’s desire, and it was good for the birds. It was meant to be.

So without further ado, I offer you today’s pocket. It is a story of how a garden bed became a sand box and how a sand box became a bubbler.

Speaking of something becoming something else, I wonder if you have read the children’s book Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. Joseph starts out with an overcoat which becomes “old and worn,” so Joseph turns his overcoat into a jacket, which then, as things do, also becomes old and worn. He turns his jacket into a vest, which…you get the idea. It is worth noting that the art in the book is super clever, as one item transforms into another with cut-outs in the illustrations. Joseph responds to each change of circumstance with grace, creating a scarf, a necktie, a handkerchief all the while celebrating life, dancing at “his nephew’s wedding,” singing in “the men’s chorus,” visiting his “married sister in the city.” He eventually gets to the point where all that is left of his overcoat is the button, and then he loses the button, so he has nothing, but he doesn’t have nothing because he decides to write a book about it.

Last week, I dropped Anna off at the airport. She was going to visit her friend in Albuquerque. (Albuquerque is a city I will never remember how to spell, so here is my gratitude for spell check.) I wasn’t concerned about spell check, though. I was worried that TSA wouldn’t let Anna on the plane because she doesn’t have a driver’s license yet. I called Delta twice. The first time I was directed to an automated chat, where the non-human on the other end, sent me a pdf of the TSA handbook and informed me that passengers under the age of 18 do not need id. It probably doesn’t surprise you that this interchange did little to soothe my concerns, so I called a second time. I said representative so many times that I was finally allowed to speak to an actual person who told me the same thing that the auto chat did, but because they did it in their reassuring human voice, I felt better.  

And it seems like they knew what they were talking about because Anna’s plane took off with her on it. She visited her friend and is now back in Spokane, a city I can spell. As I think about Anna’s trip, I’m aware that our lives are once again shifting into something else. Anna has her first full time job this summer, and Seabass spends most of his time at the YMCA playing basketball and plotting how he can be the next Ja Morant. They are still mine, and yet I recognize they are very much their own people and are starting to live lives of their own choosing. Since I am not working full time over the summer, I have more time to notice this shift.

Motherhood is a shifting landscape. Life is a shifting landscape. The ground is not as solid as I once thought.

And it occurs to me that I have two options. I can cling desperately to anything within my grasp, even if what remains might not be worth holding on to.  I can attempt to defy the ever-shifting ground by firmly planting both feet down, as deep as they can go, and willing my entire being to become unbendable, or … I can let go a little and see where things take me.

Last week before Anna took her trip, we took our kids and two of their friends to Silverwood, an amusement and water park, just across the state line in Idaho. The boys convinced me to go on the Timber Terror which is a rickety wooden roller coaster. As I strapped myself into the roller coaster and pulled my seatbelt over me as tight as I could, I noticed a sign that read, “It is strongly recommended not to ride with hands in the air.” Needless to say, I found this sign both hilarious and terrifying. How much was riding on this recommendation? Are they really suggesting that holding on for dear life just might be the thing to save me if things go horribly awry?

Don’t get me wrong. I definitely held on, even though part of me liked to believe the sign was put there by someone who understood that kids might have more fun if they felt like they were breaking the rules. Because obviously any kid who reads that sign is definitely going to put their hands in the air. Once I was safely back on two solid feet though, I couldn’t get the sign out of my mind. I thought about how by adhering to its advice, I was reinforcing my long-held beliefs about control. Everything will be okay if I just hold on tightly enough.

That’s not what Joseph does though. He doesn’t cling to his old things. Instead, he responds to changes in his life by adapting and being creative.

That’s not what Mother Nature tells us to do either. One only has to look to the sentient wisdom of trees. Have you noticed how trees shake during storms?

I think about the palm trees that surrounded my grandmother’s condo in Florida, and how in strong winds, they looked almost like they were dancing. If they remained rigid, they would snap. Instead, they bent in response to the wind, and the wind, in turn, made their roots stronger, enabling them to hopefully weather future storms.

I’m going to close out today’s pocket by telling you a children’s story. It is a story about how a garden bed became a sandbox and how a sandbox became a bubbler. Just like Joseph’s story is about more than how an overcoat became a button, so my story is about more than how a sandbox became a bubbler.  

Mateo came to live with Mary and Dan during a time when his birth family could not take care of him. Mary and Mateo built a sandbox together, paver by paver. Mateo moved into Mary’s and Dan’s house, and it was full of Mary and Dan’s things. Mateo brought some of his things to Mary and Dan’s house, and Mary and her family shared their things with Mateo, but sometimes he still felt a little out of place. The sandbox made Mateo feel special because it was built just for him.

Mateo and Mary filled the sandbox with sand and lots of toys, and Mateo played it in for long stretches of time while Mary tended the vegetables and flowers. Sometimes they played it in together and pretended to have a tea party. “Dahling, this is delicious,” Mateo would say.

“Thank you, Dahling,” Mary would respond.

While Mary and Mateo were playing in the sandbox and growing things, Mateo’s dad was working really hard to make a home of his own, so that Mateo could come home and live with him. He loved Mateo, and he missed him. One day, Mary found out that Mateo’s dad was ready for Mateo to come home. She was happy for Mateo, but she was also sad. She and Dan told Mateo the news. He was happy but also sad.

Mateo took lots of things with him to his new home, pictures of all the places they played together, books they read before bed and some old and new toys. But the sandbox was too big for Mateo to take with him, so he left it behind.

For a long time, the sandbox sat quietly in the back of Mary’s garden, and Mary sat quietly beside it. It held a few construction vehicles that Mateo forgot to pack. Mary didn’t know what to do with them, so she left them there.

The neighborhood cats started to wonder if perhaps Mary had built the sandbox for them. They started to visit more. Mary didn’t mind. It kept them out of her vegetables, and they kept her company when she missed Mateo. Mary named her favorite cat Joy for the feeling that rose up in her heart when the cat started to visit regularly.

One day, Mary decided that some other little boys and girls might want to play with the construction vehicles, and so she cleaned them. She used a lot of bleach and water, and they looked, and more importantly smelled, like new. She gathered them up and put them in a bag and placed them in front of her house. She wrote Free on the bag with a large red marker.

Mary decided that perhaps she should clean up the cats’ messes too. That took a while. The cats had been busy. It was a poop party. Mary didn’t mind, though. She could sense that feeling again, welling up inside of her.

She wondered what would happen if she allowed it to bubble up.

Mary decided to build something special for herself just like she had done for Mateo. She would build a bubbler to remind herself that it was okay to always leave room for joy. She asked her son Seabass to help her. They added pavers to the sandbox, and inside they placed a large plastic bin. They filled this bin with water and water hyacinths to keep the water cool for the birds. Then, they set up a small solar fountain. When the sun hits, the cool water bubbles up and sings an inviting song.

Mary can hear the song in her heart, and she’s hoping the birds can hear it too.  

Maybe Mateo can visit one day, and they can sit and listen to the new song together.

Maybe they will see some birds.

If that doesn’t happen, though, Mary will be okay.

She will remember to keep room in her heart for tiny bubbles of joy.

Here’ a video of the little bubbler we built. It was an easy, inexpensive project, and it is has put a fountain in my heart.

Also, here’s another link to Andrea Gibson’s Substack Things That Don’t Suck, where they speak about joy being the one emotion they didn’t allow, and how they are learning to notice and invite joy into their life. Any time Andrea gets “an inkling of joy” they allow it to “bubble up to the surface” of their being. I thought about Andrea’s words a lot as I was cleaning up cat poop.

“Joy is the chord of a parachute that can save us.”

Finally, speaking of Joy. She was one of the first visitors to the fountain.